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I done good too. |
Posted on 05/08/2005 12:54:23 PM PDT by gitmo
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I done good too. |
Aint't that tough, really.
GRIN : )
The article was very well put. I still can't believe there are some kids who are graduating high school and cannot read! That's a travesty!
We're in more trouble than I thought...
''has been dating'' is hardly the present tense, which would be the awkward construction ''John dates Jane on Fridays''. ''has been dating'' is the present perfect progressive, describing an action or actions performed in the past and which has or have continued until the present, and possibly into the future.
Time to take out the Strunk & White, 'Professor'.
The author obviously flunked basic arithmetic.
We're in more trouble than I thought...
I was a Teaching Assistant at the University of Georgia, teaching Intro Biology. One of the labs we conducted involved long division. I never told the students ahead of time to bring a calculator, because it really wasn't that difficult a problem. In 3-4 years of teaching, I never encountered a student who had ever heard of doing long division without a calculator. 142.5/34 was an impossible problem.
Even discounting the virtually universal illegibility, there is a widespread inability to place a subject, verb, and other sentence components in a proper syntax that would permit a reader to understand what is being said. It is all an exercise in disappointment.
Thus being so, there is always a segment of the class that demonstrates those academic traits and communications skills that make teaching a worthwhile undertaking. I agree with the conventional wisdom among professors that the top of the class at any school, (eg: the small central Florida liberal arts college at which I teach one class each semester), would be at the top of the class at any major college or university. It is at the bottom of the class where the difference is so clearly cognizable.
So, to what should we attribute the cause of this demise of education?The public school systems have reduced academic standards to a very low common denominator that purposefully is manipulated to accomplish two goals: (1) to allow students who likely otherwise would fail state standardized tests to achieve a score that moves them on to the next grade even though they're not really prepared; and, (2) to avoid the allegations of discrimination and disproportionate attention arising from a segment of the local community, a discrete, easily identifiable part of the populace served by the school that believe the schools are adult day care centers. These are parents who do not participate in parent oriented programs to improve things and who thrive on their perceived state of oppression.
Local governing and taxing authorities haven't been much help either. If the rest of the country is like Florida, and I believe it is, they have eliminated basic academic courses like advanced math, basic sience, English literature, and other courses that are meant to produce well rounded, collge ready and educated youth. The rationale' always offered is related to public dollars available.
The past tense is "Jane dated John for two years."
That depends on whether you have performed a partial colectomy or have constructed a neo-bladder after urinary bladder resection.
"So, the semi-colon that we used for your neo-bladder is now for Number One and the remainder of your colon is still for Number Two."
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Love the tagline (you little cutie-on-duty)!!! |
5) Change that sentence to the corresponding past tense.
I wouldn't say the author is wrong here, though I grant that using the words "a past tense/a present tense" is vague and misleading. As concerns question #4, it is in fact a present tense, but not the present tense, otherwise known as the preterite. Although "has been dating" has a past tense form (n.b. not the past tense), and as such is called the present perfect progressive (the word "perfect" implying past time), it still functions mainly in the present time. Its meaning is that of a verbal act or condition beginning at some indefinite point in the past but continuing up to the present. So, even though it includes the idea of past time, the verb's main force of meaning is still that of an act or condition occurring in the present time. This idea of the present time is reinforced by the corresponding construction of the same idea in certain foreign languages (Spanish and German are what I know, but I'm sure many others do the same) using simply the present tense. That construction is essentially "I am dating for two years", but it means "I have been dating for two years".
Similarly, the answer to question #5 is "I had been dating for two years", as the author said. The question does not ask for the past tense or preterite form, but for the corresponding form of the present perfect progressive were it in the past time. The corresponding form is thus the past perfect progressive, i.e. "had been dating"
I missed the word, "corresponding."
You are correct.
However, for a 'professor' to confuse the preterite with the present perfect progressive is simply unacceptable. This is the same type of sloppy thinking that manifests itself all through government schools, albeit not quite on the level of the nauseating notions of 'creative spelling' and 'creative math (sic)'.
BTW, and no offence, but ''I am dating Jane'' is not the simple present tense, but rather the present progressive. ''I date Jane'' would be an example of the simple present. As my old Latin teacher always insisted: ''the presence of a participle is proof of the progressive''.
:^)
Actually, 'had been dating' is an example of the past perfect progressive (aka pluperfect progressive). Any verb construction that describes an action that is or has been ongoing for a period of time is a progressive tense.
That was my answer, too.
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